Monthly Archives: June 2015

While I never did well in chemistry class, where they babbled about entropy regularly, I did come across something just now that made me think again about entropy.

According to the Information Philosopher (and many, many other sources, but this was the one that triggered this thought),

“…When information is stored in any structure, from galaxies to minds, two fundamental physical processes occur. First is a collapse of a quantum mechanical wave function. Second is a local decrease in the entropy corresponding to the increase in information. Entropy greater than that must be transferred away to satisfy the second law.”

So, logically, if a person (one who is capable of and does store new knowledge regularly) is decreasing their internal entropy by storing new information, then the entropy must be increasing around them. It’s like there’s a little entropy-transferring engine running in the person’s brain and as that information is encoded, the “waste” entropy is exhausted to the universe around the person. Thus, a smart person walking into a room and thinking must increase the external entropy. If there are others in the room, do they get dumber?

Can this be boiled down to “intelligent people make the dumb ones even dumber”?

Another thought – what happens in our state capitol when the Arizona Senate and House get together? Is the great roaring sound we hear that of the winds of entropy spiraling in on 1700 West Washington St?